Year: 1974
Type: article
Abstract: A "Much more can be done with plastic trees and the like to give people the feeling that they are experiencing nature."Martin Krieger offers this remarkable bit of advice in his article, "What's Wrong with Plastic Trees?"He continues: "Artificial prairies and wildernesses have been created, and there is no reason to believe that these artificial environments need be unsatisfactory for those who experience them."'He is right.In two sentences, Krieger has fashioned something of a reductio ad absurdum of contemporary "utilitarian ' 2 arguments for preserving the* environment.Think about it.Environmentalists themselves urge us to wear imitation rather than real fur coats.And athletes often prefer astroturf to real grass.Not only they: homeowners are beginning to see the advantages of artificial lawns-"bright, beautiful, durable, and fade resistant," just as the Monsanto Corporation claims."L.D. Beachene of Oklahoma City . . . got sick of trying to keep his lawn green," reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.The newspaper continues: So he figured out how much it would cost him in fertilizer, water, insecticides, hoses, sprinklers and what all, and decided it wasn't worth it.He had the whole lawn ripped up and replaced with
Source: The Yale Law Journal
DOI: 10.2307/795401
Author: Mark Sagoff
Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Language: English
Subfield: Nature and Landscape Conservation
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Life on land
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W621979832